Ghost was weak too, but she had a smile on her face which I didn’t particularly understand, but fuck, if she could find something to smile about then I was glad for it. She’d curled into me as I hauled her into my arms and sighed when I walked her through the forest.
“We’re going to be okay,” she’d told me, and I really fucking hoped she was right.
“‘Course you are,” I’d replied gruffly.
“No. I mean it. We’ll be okay. Now that we’re out of that place…we’ve survived worse.”
Worse?
Sweet fuck.
I couldn’t have this conversation. Couldn’t. Have. It. But the ghost went on. Telling me about the ship that had brought her over from Europe, followed by a truck ride where they hadn’t seen the light of day for eighty hours.
Holy fuck.
What these women had been through?
I wanted to scream.
Then, something occurred to me. “He didn’t kidnap you, did he?”
Ghost rocked her head on my shoulder. “He bought us.”
Fuck.
I blew out a breath as my brain started rattling around inside my skull. I couldn’t focus on that, couldn’t focus on anything other than getting them back to the clubhouse where Stone could sort them out.
She’d bitch about it at first, but she was one of us, knew the score, and knew how shit worked so she’d help. Even if that involved her cursing us to hell as she went about her business.
I could deal with that, I could, mostly. I just wanted the women to get help. I couldn’t imagine what they’d been through, couldn’t begin to understand how someone could imprison them the way they had.
“It’s okay,” the ghost soothed, making me flinch because if anyone needed soothing, it was her. Not me.
“No, it’s not,” I’d retorted, managing to control my tone enough not to bite at her. I wasn’t feeling soft and gentle, wasn’t feeling tender and easy. None of those were my usual state of play, but I had to be all four of them because Ghost and the other women deserved no less. “Ghost, it’s the exact opposite of okay.”
She tilted her head to the side. “My name isn’t Ghost.”
“You whisper like one,” I countered, like it made total sense and maybe it did to her because she snickered.
“I like this name.”
“You do?” My lips curved despite themselves. “I aim to please.”
She snorted. “This I doubt.”
“Then you’d be wrong. Got the best rep in the MC,” I boasted, but I wasn’t really. I didn’t give a fuck about rep, didn’t give a shit about what the club bunnies thought about me. I liked what I liked, took what I needed, simple.
But if it made Ghost laugh?
Yeah, I’d talk smack all damn day.
“Will we cause much trouble for you?”
My brow puckered at that. “Don’t worry about that. Just worry about getting better.”
“A dead body will cause more trouble,” she muttered in that soft voice of hers, a tone so quiet that it made me strain my ears to hear it.
“I didn’t say that,” I chided, even if she was right.
“You didn’t need to. It’s true. But I know that isn’t why you’re helping. I didn’t mean it that way.”
“If we wanted you dead, we’d work to that end. We want you to live, Ghost. Didn’t come all the way to the border just to stick our thumbs up our asses and gawk at you.”
“That sounds uncomfortable.”
My lips twitched and I was on the brink of making a joke about how she’d be surprised, but if anyone knew what it meant to be uncomfortable, it was her.
Inside, I wriggled. Yeah, I knew that sounded weird. But I internalized my fidgeting because I couldn’t do shit about it now. I was used to wanting to fidget on my bike, so I forced it inside, just like I did now. I focused on that and split it with getting us back to the van Giulia and Nyx had rented.
The vehicle was a big one with three rows of seating where we each placed one of the women. We’d probably have to set fire to the damn thing and lose our deposit because there was no way the upholstery wasn’t ruined after this trip, but that was neither here nor there. Storm, our VP, was good with shit like that, so he’d be the one to dispose of the vehicle when the time came.
Giulia handed them all something, and I saw they were bags of trail mix and a large bottle of sports drink. When she passed them bottles of pills next, I wanted to wince at the amount of pain they’d be in, but I took a step back and muttered, “Giulia, drive safe.”
“Of course.” She tipped her chin up. “I’m a good driver.”
Nyx chucked her under the chin. “Gonna be hard with that smell. They’re gonna moan and cry and…” He blew out a breath. “Not gonna be easy.”
“I could have been one of them. If he’d managed to get me out of the bar, if he’d managed to get me into his car, only fuck knows where he’d have taken me, what he’d have done.” Her chin tilted impossibly higher. “I’m good. We need to get going.”
She reached up on tiptoe and kissed him real fast before she spun around and headed for the driver’s seat.
Without waiting on us, she began the slow reverse down the rough track and I had to admit, she did a pretty good job of getting them out of there.
Nyx, his body tense as he stared at his woman in the driver’s seat, grumbled, “Fucking hate cages.”
My lips twitched. “You just hate that she’s riding in one.”
“Should be riding bitch on the back of my hog.”
I clapped my hand on his back, amused at his grouchy tone despite the situation. “You gonna piss on her and mark your territory? I wanna be there to watch you do it because she’ll fuck you up, brother.”
He shot me a scowl. “What does that have to do with me hating that she’s not riding back with me?”
“Because you’re gonna blow your wad with her if you try and hold on too tight.”
Nyx growled under his breath. “Do I have to remind you what she’s just been through? And what she’s currently doing as she transports more of her attacker’s victims across the goddamn state?”
“The woman kicked a guy hard enough to rupture his fucking balls, dude. She attacked Luke back. She came out the victor. You forget that and you’ll underestimate her.” I shrugged. “It’s no skin off my nose if you suffocate her to death by trying to keep her safe, but—”
Nyx raised a hand. “Enough, Link. I’m not in the mood.”
I shrugged again, watching as he took off for his bike, climbed astride the beast, and set off. The second he did, and the second Giulia saw him, she drove off from where she’d been idling, waiting on us to haul ass.
“Why you needling him?”
Shooting Steel a look, I muttered, “I’m opening his eyes.”
“Why? It ain’t like this is a new piece to Nyx’s puzzle. He’s always been protective of bitches. What he saw in that cabin must have been like a knife to the fucking gut for him.”
“Giulia’s good for him,” I replied softly. “I don’t want him to fuck it up by being too Nyx.”
“Maybe that’s what she likes. She’s glued to him enough. Fuck, they’re both like squids.”
My eyes widened at that. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“Means they’ve got their tentacles all over each another.”
That had my nose crinkling. “That’s fucking gross.”
Steel shrugged. “True though. They’re sucked onto one another. Probably for life knowing Nyx. He ain’t one to get serious unless it was hardcore shit.”
Because I agreed with him on that score, but not the fucking tentacle shit, I just said, “We need to get you a different porn site. You’re watching too much hentai.”
He flipped me the bird. “Fuck off.”
“Only thinking of your poor ma. What’s she gonna do when she finds you in bed with a fucking octopus?”
He shoved me in the shoulder. “Prick. Let’s get going.”
Somehow, we had to right the wrongs that had occurred in these woods, a forest that, with the light of morning, was a beautiful, if still eerie place. It was hard to think of all the monstrosities that had gone down here, harder still to think of the dead woman back in that cabin.
I felt as big of a bastard as Lancaster for leaving her there, in that fucking place, but I didn’t have much of an alternative. It was amateur to bury a body in the woods, and disposing of her remains…I blew out a breath. No. She deserved a sweeter ending than what she was going to get.
As I kick-started my hog, I thought about how I could make that happen and began the journey home. A journey that Sarah would never make again.
Stone
When I saw him roll through the compound gates, that same fucking bright orange hog between his thighs, same old hair whipping all over the goddamn place from under his helmet, I wanted to kick him off the bike. I did. I wanted to do something, anything, to make him hurt as badly as he’d made me hurt.
He’d let me think he was ill.
Sure, Nyx had been behind that, the schmuck, but Steel could have texted me, let me know that he was okay. Instead, I’d spent two hours racing to West Orange, trying to get here in time to…
I blew out a breath.
What?
Say goodbye? When we should never have said that in the first place?
I gritted my teeth as I stacked my hands on my hips. At the sight, Rex muttered, “Sweet fuck.”
I knew why.
I was named after the Rolling Stones—yeah, my mom’s imagination was shit—but everyone knew I went stone-cold when I was pissed. When I started showing emotion? They knew to run for the hills.
I’d been raised with these fuckers. I knew the score. Knew that if Steel had been injured, it would have been doing something the government considered illegal, and I knew that no matter how fast I raced to get to him, it wouldn’t be fast enough. People bled out from gunshot and knife wounds fast.
Nyx had called at the end of a busy shift in the ER. I’d already been hyped up from losing a kid on my watch. She’d come in after a simple car crash. So simple, she hadn’t presented anything except for a headache. A fucking headache. My superior wanted to send her home, give her some Children’s Tylenol. Me? I’d had a bad vibe. I was still only a resident and Hyde was a fucking senior resident, which gave him more pull than me.
I’d forged his fucking signature to get her a CAT scan, but it had been too late.
She’d died.
She’d fucking died while I bullshitted around with the bureaucracy that was fundamental in a med program.
I was amped up, ready for a fight, and the sight of Steel, someone I fucking loved, who I’d thought was dying, riding back without a care in the world?
Yeah, I wanted to kick him in the balls.
Badly.
I gritted my teeth when he pulled up, barely even noticing the cage that was braking to a halt alongside him.
“You’re not dead,” I told him stonily—that was my rep, after all.
He tugged off his helmet. “Disappointed?”
My top lip curled, then Nyx stepped into my line of sight looking, as per fucking usual, too handsome for the good of anyone with ovaries.
“You lied to me,” I snapped.
“No, you didn’t let me get a word in edgewise. You assumed because I had Steel’s phone that—”
“A solid assumption,” I barked.
“If you’d let me fucking finish,” he growled. “Then, and now, I’d have explained.”
“Go on then. Explain why you let me think our brother was fucking dead.”
He gritted his teeth. “He ain’t your brother.”
Wasn’t that the goddamn truth.
“I grew up in this place too, Nyx. I don’t have to have a prick to be a part of this fucked up family.”
That had him tilting his chin down in anger. “Family don’t leave family behind.”
Stung, my eyes flared wide. He’d hurt me. I was used to that. But hurting me only pissed me off and I snarled, “Some of us want to do shit with our lives. Rex is paying for my fucking education. What would you have me do? Waste my fucking calling as I spread my legs for the MC? Or have me do something I’m good at and learn how to be the best I can be?”
“Nyx?”
The voice sounded soft, but there was steel behind it.
He turned to look at the woman who’d just rounded the fender of the vehicle I’d only just registered. “Giulia, not—”
“Nyx, you take that back.”
I jerked in surprise at her tone then, when I studied her some more, I frowned. In my ear, Rex muttered, “She’s Lizzie Fontaine and Dog’s kid.”
My mouth rounded into an O as I processed that. She looked like Lizzie. Crazily so.
Apparently had her temper too.
“She’s Nyx’s Old Lady, babe.” Rex punctuated his quiet update with a grunt.
“She left us behind,” Nyx spouted stubbornly.
“What did she leave behind? She’s here now, isn’t she? You called her and she came. Immediately. Isn’t that what family does?”
Nyx’s mouth turned stubborn. “You don’t know every detail.”
“I’m sure I don’t, but if Stone’s good at what she does and wants to be more, then what’s wrong with that?”
“I like you,” I declared, uncaring that had most of the guys snickering around me. “You don’t let him get away with any shit and he needs that. They all fucking do.”
She tipped her chin to the side. “I didn’t remember you until I got out of the car. You always were fixing shit.”
“Always plenty to fix around this place.” I studied her, then muttered, “What the hell are you doing riding in a cage with these three bozos?”
Her lips twitched. “Got three women who need your help.”
“Why?” I frowned, trying to peer into the windows of the van. “What’s gone down with them?”
She blew out a breath and it didn’t escape me that Rex didn’t step up to try to explain shit, nor did any of the other brothers gathered around me. I knew them as well as I knew my own flesh and blood, but each of them granted Giulia a level of respect I didn’t understand.
Normally, that came with blood. The shedding thereof. Especially of an enemy. That she was Dog’s daughter and Nyx’s woman told me she wasn’t as soft as she appeared, but murder?
I didn’t think so.
“I was attacked at Daytona.”
Because nothing surprised me where the club was concerned, I merely concentrated on something I didn’t comprehend. “The racing place?” I questioned with a scowl.
“No. Our new bar,” Rex muttered, and when I turned to look at him, I saw he was leaning against the railing, arms folded across his chest as he glowered down at his boots.
“A customer tried to rape me but I—” She exhaled loudly, made fists with her hands, and punching the air at her sides, ground out, “Long story short, we found out this was a regular thing of his. At least, hurting women I mean. We learned he was holding some women captive and with him dead—”
“You killed him?” I squawked, stunned despite myself.
Her cheeks flushed, and she shot Nyx a welcome glance as he approached and came to stand at her side. The move was defensive, possessive, protective, and assertive. In fact, I wasn’t sure how Nyx managed to channel all four at once, but it was better than a burglar alarm. It declared to one and all, especially one—me—to back the fuck off.
“Yeah. Anyway, we’ve been hunting the women ever since. He’s dead.” She shrugged. “If he couldn’t care for them, then who could?”
My jaw worked for a second as I bit out, “You found them?”
“There were four. One was dead.” Link whistled, drawing my attention his way, and because he was perennially cheerful, the somberness
in his eyes blew my fucking mind. “Never seen anything like it. Ever.”
“There a reason you didn’t take them to the ER?”
“They’re illegals. One of them begged us not to take them to a hospital.”
At her explanation, I reached up and pinched the bridge of my nose, then I squeezed it harder when Link stated, “He bought them. Bought them. Like they were fucking animals or something.”
I knew the MC was into many things, but trafficking humans had never been our bag. I was glad for that because, if they had, I’d have reported them to the cops. Family or not. And if that made me a treacherous bitch, then so be it.
The ER was where I wanted to center my future, and it was, in its own way, a front line. I was used to the trauma because of this life right here. A life where random fuckery happened every day, and you had to take it on the chin or be steamrolled over and flattened like a pancake.
“They were in cages,” Nyx said gruffly, his arm coming around to embrace Giulia, who bit her lip as she stared at me. “Living in their shit and piss. The dead girl…” He sucked in a breath. “She was in a cage, along with two of the others.”
If what he’d seen had the power to make Nyx turn green, I knew it was fucked up.
Fucked up enough that maybe even I wouldn’t be able to handle what was coming my way.
That steam roller I’d mentioned before?
Well, maybe it had turned into a freight train and I was already halfway under it.
Swallowing down my nerves, I knew I had to get a handle on things. Fast. “Let’s get them somewhere warm.”
“You’re going to help?”
I turned to Rex. “Was that ever in question?”
He’d believed in me, had funded my career from the very start. I owed him and the MC everything. But I wasn’t doing this for that.
Whether it was in an ER or in one of the bunkrooms on the compound, I was born for this. Born to heal.
I breathed in deeply and took a step toward the vehicle. As I moved, headed down to the drive, Steel grabbed my arm. He stared at me, forced me to look at him by not letting go of me, and when he knew he had my attention, insisted grimly, “It’s bad, Stone. There were rats.”
Forgotten & Found: A Dark & Dirty Sinners' MC Boxset Page 33